


olfactory intervention

by ax100



Series: blood runs hot [1]
Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Alpha Galo Thymos, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Lio Fotia, Post-Canon, i'll just add tags as they get revealed lmao, there's a lot of emotions bc that's just my brand guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24718027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ax100/pseuds/ax100
Summary: “It’s weird,” Galo comments at length, “You smell different, but you don’t smell particularly like anything? I’m not even sure how I’m able to tell something has changed at all, to be honest…” He reaches up to scratch the back of his head, confused.Remi sighs from where he’s stood at the side, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If I had to guess, it’s pre-presentation,” he says, “You know, the stage when a person’s scent glands undergo changes before they start giving off any particular scent?”“It’s a little late for Lio to be presenting only now though, isn’t it?” Lucia asks.“I’ve already presented, though,” Lio blurts out before he can think better of it. “I’m an omega.”--------In the wake of the Second Great World Blaze, former Burnish have started to regain something they thought they had lost forever: their secondary sex. Lio Fotia is no different, though he's always thought he was better off without the delicate inconveniences that came with being an omega anyway. Not that he has any choice in the matter now.It's fine, he'll deal with it. And good ol' alpha Galo comes along for the ride. No, really, he insists.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Series: blood runs hot [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1787110
Comments: 26
Kudos: 139





	olfactory intervention

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, hi, hello! Ax here! Back at you with...another fandom LOL
> 
> I watched Promare last month (on May 1, to be exact). It started when I stumbled upon the soup store clip (y'all know the one) and Kakusei. There was a day I did nothing but listen to the Promare OST and it was PHENOMENAL so I was like 'ok I gotta get on that shit ASAP' so I downloaded the movie. I was about to go to bed on April 30 when I said 'I'll just test out the file and see if it's okay' and GUESS WHO STAYED UP WATCHING THE WHOLE FUCKING THING. So yeah, Promare has taken over my life. I've watched the movie 12 times. I've ordered the collector's edition DVD from the US. I lost actual sleep because I thought I'd missed the deadline for ordering the Hyper Fire Storyboard Book (yes, we're that deep in). I'm waiting on my Galo and Lio Nendoroids (and YES I got the Complete Combustion Lio). Lizard brain is in FULL EFFECT.
> 
> I started this fic thinking that I need to see some classic A/B/O heat sex between Galo and Lio, but, as with all smut I try to write, I just HAD to think about the worldbuilding and social context and FEELINGS. So now here we are. I'm planning to have this fic be more about character exploration and worldbuilding, and the smut will come in another part of the series HAHAHAHUHUHU (why do I do this)
> 
> Some notes: This fic takes place a few months after the events of the movie, somewhere around 5-6 months later. Any unfamiliar characters mentioned are my OCs. The rest of it, you'll figure out as you go along, I'm sure :D
> 
> Enjoy! <3

Lio knows something is up.

He puts down the newspaper he’s reading; not like he’s able to concentrate anyway. He turns to look behind him, settling an arm on the back of the couch.

“Galo,” he says steadily, to the man perched on a stool at the HQ breakfast bar, arms crossed and face contorted into something odd. “You’ve been staring at me all morning. What is it?”

Aina, Lucia, Remi, and Varys--the sudden question grabs their attention too, and they all look up from what they’re doing to look to see where this conversation is headed.

“Mmmmm,” Galo sounds out from where he’s seated. His lips purse even further as he squints at Lio, like he’s about to blow his last two brain cells on figuring out whatever it is that’s bugging him. “You…” he says slowly after a while, “smell different.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence as the statement settles.

 _“What.”_ Lio says, severely unimpressed.

 _“Galo!”_ Aina scolds, sitting up on the cot she had previously been lounging on. “That’s rude!”

“ _Aaaand_ the idiot went and said it,” Lucia chirps, going back to fiddling with her latest project, another addition to Galo’s Matoi Tech that, as far as the rest of them knew, had not been run--let alone approved--by Ignis.

“Wait, what?” Lio asks, a proper question this time, as he whips his head back to look at her. “Do I really smell different?”

Around him, the other team members seem to shrink under the question, looking a bit embarrassed. Eventually, Remi gathers his wits and clears his throat. “Well...yes,” he says simply, using the sheen on his glasses to pointedly avoid eye contact with Lio.

“But it’s still rude to point it out,” Aina adds, shooting a glare at Galo over Lio’s head.

“Do I smell bad?” Lio asks, pulling the front of his blouse up to sniff at it. He didn’t smell particularly rank, as far as he could tell.

“Not bad,” she reassures him, bright and encouraging. “Just different. It’s very subtle.”

“Really? It’s pretty strong,” Galo retorts from the kitchenette, and Aina looks like she’s about ready to murder him.

“I’d have to agree with Galo on that one,” Varys pipes up from the corner, trying to look busy as he darns a hole in his jacket. The tips of his ears are burning red though.

“As expected of an alpha’s nose,” Lucia snickers, and Varys’ ears go even redder.

The implications of the statement roll through Lio’s mind before exploding into shocking realization.

 _“Hah?!”_ he squawks incredulously, bolting up in his seat before he can stop himself. The sound, so uncharacteristic for the calm and collected Lio, startles the others as well.

“I-It’s okay, Lio!” Again, Aina is quick to try and mollify him, her hands held up in a placating gesture. “We weren’t going to say anything until you were ready to talk about it.” She sends a pointed look once more at Galo. “Until _someone_ brought it up, that is.”

“No, I mean…I didn’t...I don’t...” he blabbers, trying to get his thoughts back in order. _That’s_ what they meant?! Lio pulls the collar of his shirt up to his nose once again. Still smelled normal, like laundry detergent and the lavender-scented fabric softener Galo uses. “I...don’t smell anything different…?” he says tentatively.

“Like Aina said,” Remi says, looking at him properly now. “It’s pretty subtle. We don’t even really notice it, unless we’re really near you. It’s probably a little more noticeable for Galo and Varys, though, since they’re alphas.”

“I see…” Lio trails off as he lets the information stew, his mind buzzing. Footsteps come up from behind and he looks up to see Galo come to stand beside the sofa, brow furrowed. Lio opens his mouth to speak, when Galo suddenly places his hands on his hips and leans down, closer to his level, and takes a long, deep inhale, his nostrils flaring.

 _“Galo!”_ Lio growls, his face flooding with heat as he scrambles backward on the couch. Around them, the others are also yelling or otherwise expressing their disapproval at the action. (Even his fellow alpha Varys, who rumbles out a deep, _“Come on, man, that’s not cool.”_ )

Galo straightens up, unbothered by all the commotion, and just looks at Lio curiously. “It’s weird,” he comments at length, uncharacteristically contemplative, “You smell different, but you don’t smell particularly like anything? I’m not even sure how I’m able to tell something has changed at all, to be honest…” He reaches up to scratch the back of his head, confused.

Remi sighs from where he’s stood at the side, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If I had to guess, it’s pre-presentation,” he says, and everyone’s eyes turn to him. “You know that, don’t you? The stage when a person’s scent glands undergo changes before they start giving off any particular scent?”

“It’s a little late for Lio to be presenting only now though, isn’t it?” Lucia asks.

“I’ve already presented, though,” Lio blurts out before he can think better of it. “I’m an omega.”

Everyone’s gazes snap towards him, surprised. That’s when his brain finally catches up with what he’d said, and he flushes bright red.

 _“WHAT?!”_ Galo screeches, and Lio startles to look at him. His eyes are as huge as dinner plates. “You never told me that!”

“I-It was never relevant!” Lio retorts, looking away, equal parts embarrassed and indignant. “And besides, that was before--” He stops, as the fragmented, half-formed thoughts suddenly click.

_Could this mean…?_

“‘Never relevant’?!” Galo echoes. Lio looks back up to see Galo’s face twisted into an expression of horror and disbelief, bordering on despair. There’s a slightly crazed look in his eye and he’s poised like he’s about to grab Lio by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. _“Lio--”_ he starts, taking a step towards him, and Lio automatically scoots backward on the couch to maintain their distance.

Then, the alarm starts blaring.

_“Dispatch request for Burning Rescue! Fire at District 3, Block 24, Suzue Robotics Laboratories! I repeat, dispatch request for Burning Rescue--”_

The team jumps into action immediately, running over to their lockers to grab their gear—all except Galo, who remains rooted to the spot for a moment, still gaping at Lio. Ignis shows up a second later from the inner part of the station, where he’d been cooped up in his office to work through a hefty pile of paperwork. “Move it, Thymos!” he barks as he dashes past him and Lio.

That’s enough to make him get a grip, at least. Galo shakes himself out of his stupor, _literally,_ then runs over to his own locker--but not before leaning down to drop a lightning-quick kiss on Lio’s forehead as he passes, right over his bangs. Lio head snaps up, constantly surprised by how quickly Galo can switch gears, but by the time he looks at him, Galo is already fist-bumping with his team before they pile into their vehicles.

“Be careful!” Lio calls out after them-- _him_ , in particular, the one most likely to get himself killed in a fit of idiocy--as he gets up on his feet. Galo shoots him a grin and a thumbs-up over his shoulder in return.

“We’ll talk about it more tonight, okay?!” Galo shouts, not waiting for an answer before he jumps into the Rescue Mobile, and the door whizzes shut behind him.

Sirens blaring, lights flashing, the Burning Rescue squad moves out, leaving behind a cloud of dust that makes Lio’s eyes flutter closed. The wailing of sirens peter out as they race down the street. It is soon replaced by the quiet, mechanical sound of the metal shutters to the garage rolling back down.

Lio blinks his eyes back open, suddenly alone in this big fire station. Not that he minds--it’s not the first time it’s happened, definitely wouldn’t be the last.

 _Suzue Robotics though…_ he spares a worried thought for the company mentioned in the dispatch announcement. They were a company the city government had tapped on to assist in the restoration efforts, but more relevant to Lio was the fact that they were a partner in some projects of the Burnish Reintegration Committee.

_Speaking of which—_

He draws the sleeve of his blouse back to look at his watch-- _quarter past 10_ , better get a move on to his meeting. He’d ask Galo about the fire later.

He grabs his jacket off the arm of the sofa, where he had deposited it earlier when he and Galo had first arrived, and pulls it on. The leather squeaks a little as he pulls the frilled cuffs of his blouse to peek out of the sleeves, before he zips it up and pulls the ribbon tied around his neck to rest outside the jacket. His entire outfit is similar enough to what he wore during his days as the leader of Mad Burnish to remind those Administrators who they were talking to, but just different enough to make him seem a little more approachable--a little less terrorist-like, he supposes. The leather pants were a mainstay and that would never change, but he had forgone the belts--for now, at least.

He casts a considering look at the half-eaten muffin on the coffee table that he had started on three hours ago. Galo had insisted he get it, even though Lio was, until now, still more used to just having coffee in the morning. ( _“You shouldn’t have coffee on an empty stomach!”_ Galo kept telling him, and Lio _knows,_ but still, old habits are hard to shake, especially old habits from a time that everything was rationed and someone else always needed that food more than he did.)

Ultimately, he decides to just stick the whole thing, plate and all, in the fridge, where he knows Galo will later on find it and not be too pleased, before heading out.

 _Hang a right down the front entrance of the station, walk two blocks, take the blue bus labeled #4,_ echoes Galo’s voice in his head. Soon enough, Lio’s seated on the bus bound for City Hall, getting stared at as usual _(God, he couldn’t wait to get that motorcycle license already)_ , when his mind wanders back to the conversation that had been abruptly cut off earlier.

_‘You smell different--’_

_‘As expected of an alpha’s nose--’_

_‘Pre-presentation--’_

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Of course, it’s an exercise in futility. Even he knows he wouldn’t be able to smell his _own_ scent, if he was even giving a strong enough one off for people to pick up on. He just couldn’t help but wonder, what was it that Galo was smelling? _Different,_ he’d said. Was different good? Lio certainly wouldn’t be able to tell; it’d been so long since his nose had actually picked up on anything, and when it did, it was always the acrid stench of Freeze Force alphas working their scent glands double-time to choke the air with their pheromones in a display designed to intimidate.

 _Different, huh?_ he thinks as he opens his eyes again, looking at the city sailing past the window. Half of it is still in shambles, the other half in various states of repair. If Remi were to be believed, then _different_ would soon turn into _omega_ , and what would Galo say then?

_‘Never relevant--?!’ Blue eyes, wide in disbelief._

Did this really mean that he hadn’t lost his being an omega to the Promare?

The bus pulls up to City Hall, and Lio gets up to make his way to the front.

When it's his turn to pay, the bus driver watches him warily, obviously having recognized him, but Lio pays it no mind as he drops his coins into the money box. The driver’s eyes quickly scan the amount--as if the former leader of Mad Burnish would have any reason to pull a fast one on him--before deeming the amount acceptable and pulling the crank next to his thigh to let the coins drop into the chamber below.

“Good day,” he says gruffly, in a way that sounds a lot like ‘Get the hell out my sight.’

Lio nods back and pretends not to notice. “You too,” he says before alighting.

The experience, as brief as it was, is a touch sobering, and it helps him get his head back on straight. Those thoughts--of pheromones and secondary sexes and smelling _different_ \--would have to wait. For now, there were more pressing concerns to think about, like housing solutions for former Burnish and butting heads with the Council over the amnesty laws currently being drafted.

▲▼▲

The Council of Administrators that had replaced Kray Foresight as the main administrative authority of Promepolis were mostly good people, but there were a select few that still harbored disdain towards the former Burnish, and they never failed to turn these meetings into headaches, heartaches, and everything in between. So it comes as no surprise to Lio when he leaves the meeting sporting a massive headache and feeling very much wrung-out.

“You okay, Boss?” Gueira asks, leaning down a bit to get a better look at Lio’s face, partially obscured with the way the shorter man has a hand pressed against his forehead, his thumb and middle finger rubbing steady circles on the veins pounding at his temples.

“As okay as I can be after a meeting like that,” Lio mutters back with a grimace, making his way down slowly. The last thing he needs is to trip over his own feet and come crashing down the stairs of Promepolis City Hall. The press would have a field day, and he refused to give them the satisfaction.

Meis gives a derisive huff from his other side. He’s wearing a jacket, for once, out of the bare minimum of respect for the City Hall dress code. “Real piece of work, those Administrators are,” he mumbles, frustrated.

“Yeah, you said it,” Gueira agrees, straightening back up. “Talking down to us, looking at us like we’re a bunch of thugs…” He scrubs a hand through his hair.

“Just some of them, not all,” Lio reminds them, letting his hand fall back down to his side as they reach the bottom of the stairs. “Skye and his camp have been receptive to the programs we’ve proposed so far. It’s Silex and his cronies I’m worried about.”

“Yeah, they were big fans of Foresight, after all,” Meis says, pitching his voice down as he casts a look around. “Can’t imagine they were too happy to see him get thrown into the slammer.”

“Well, we’ll just have to deal with it,” Lio says. “He’s the City’s Chief Architect, so we were bound to run into him sooner or later anyway. Better we face him now rather than then.” At this, the two ex-generals nod in agreement.

“Well-said, Boss,” Gueira comments, before his slight scowl smooths out into his usual lopsided grin. “But enough of that. You deserve a break. You up for lunch?”

It's Lio's first instinct to say no--always so much to do, places to be, people to fight for. But everyone in his life now--ex-Burnish, never-Burnish, Meis and Gueira, Galo--kept on reminding him to take it slow. Time was a luxury he'd never had, but does now.

So, yes, he's up for lunch.

“Sure,” he says, the corner of his lips quirking up.

“Alright!” Gueira cheers. “Pizza it is--”

“Oy,” Meis cuts him off, then looks at Lio. “Is there anything in particular you wanted, Boss?”

Lio smiles and shakes his head in amusement. “No, pizza's fine.”

The pizzeria is only a couple of blocks away, familiar to Lio because it was also the one that Galo dragged him to whenever they were in the area. He couldn't blame him, though--the pizza was good.

“One Inferno Volcano Margherita Megamax and one Hawaiian Special,” comes the quiet voice of the server as their pizzas are placed on the table.

“Oh! Look who it is!” crows Gueira. “What are you being all meek for, Eli? You should speak up, your pizza's awesome!”

Eli flushes bright red, glowing against his dark skin. Whether the blushing is from the praise or Gueira's loud voice, Lio's not really sure.

“Er, um, thank you…” Eli replies shakily, trying to hide behind the serving tray in his hands.

“Eli, it's nice to see you again,” Lio says, giving him a friendly smile, to save him before Gueira can cause a scene, induced by his passion for good Italian food. “How are the new prosthetics?”

At this, Eli relaxes. “They're better than the previous ones, more responsive!” he chirps happily, holding up his left hand to flex the robotic fingers. “I've only had them for a week, so I'm still getting used to them, but they've been great so far. Dr. Suzue has really been fine-tuning them.”

“That's great news,” Lio says. “If you ever run into any problems or if there's any other way we can help you, just let us know, okay?”

“Thank you,” Eli replies. His cheeks flush again and he seems to hesitate before saying, “Really, Mr. Fotia, it means a lot.”

Lio sits stunned in the face of such open sincerity for a moment, but he quickly gathers his wits. “Promare or no Promare, we're still all brothers and sisters. That's what a family does--we help each other,” he says gently, before shifting to something more teasing. “And please, call me Lio already.”

“Mr. Lio,” Eli shoots back.

Lio huffs, halfway to a laugh. “Fine, I'll take that for now.”

Eli grins at that. “Better get used to it, Mr. Lio. Enjoy your pizza!” he says before taking his leave.

Gueira gives a low whistle once Eli is out of earshot. “How was _that_ for a soundbite, huh? Been saving that one, Boss?” Across him, Meis snickers as well.

Lio feels his face flood with heat at that. “Shut up,” he hisses with no real bite as he reaches over to take a slice of the Hawaiian.

The conversation flows easily into the trivial after that--bickering on whether pineapples did belong on pizza or not, the details of the new shark documentary Meis had watched the night before, another anecdote about that kid from the orphanage that had latched onto Gueira the first time they had visited…

It was...nice. If not a little foreign, still. These were the kinds of conversations none of them could really afford to have before, when they were living on borrowed time. Now, they had all the time and freedom in the world to argue about whether there was such a thing as _too much garlic_ on anything or if something covered in Vantablack could be considered invisible.

Things had shifted. The _world_ had shifted, all in a single night that had rendered the past thirty years little more than a bad dream. One that had left a lot of people dead, that much could never be forgotten, but still felt surreal and distant, like a vivid memory that had been fabricated all the same.

“Oop, don’t wander off too far now, Boss,” Gueira’s voice cuts through his thoughts.

Lio blinks back into the present to see his two ex-generals looking at him with thinly-veiled concern.

“Sorry, got lost in thought for a moment,” he mumbles before taking a bite out of his pizza. It had gone a bit cold. “Things don’t feel real sometimes.”

They nod in understanding. “We’ve all been there,” Meis says, dripping more hot sauce onto his own slice. “Peace feels weird, right? The ones that awakened early have never known anything aside from what we had. It’s a whole new world to them.” He takes a bite and chews thoughtfully before continuing, “But for a lot of us, it’s going back to a life we thought we had lost forever. A normal life. And that might be tougher, to be honest.”

The other two say nothing in return, somber in their silence. What Meis said was true. Maybe the younger ones who had been Burnish from the start would have it easier. The ones like them, those who had awakened when they were a bit older--both Meis and Gueira in their teens, and Lio in his adolescence--it couldn’t be helped to want to go back to what they had before all this, before the flames had called out to them and made them want to burn everything to the ground. But the world was different now from whatever they had left at that time when those sparks had first manifested. It was going back to what they had, but not. Not really.

_‘You smell different--’_

Did _different_ mean _as you did once_? Did it mean _like you did before, in a half-forgotten life?_

“Galo said something this morning,” he starts, getting their attention again. “He said I smell different.”

“What, like bad?” Gueira automatically asks, confused. Meis just gives him a steady look.

“No, the rest of the team also said much of the same. Remi--the one with the glasses--said it might be pre-presentation pheromones,” Lio explains. Neither of them look surprised to hear it.

“Have you presented before?” Meis asks gently.

Lio nods. “Shortly before I became a Burnish. I’m an omega.”

“Eh?!” Gueira gapes.

“I’m the same,” Meis says, ignoring him. Lio must have some sort of look on his face, because Meis laughs then continues, “Yeah, it never really mattered before now, right?”

“That’s what I told Galo. He didn’t seem to agree.”

“Typical alpha,” Meis snickers.

“You can tell?” Lio asks, surprised.

The long-haired man nods. “Smelled it on him the last time we saw you guys.”

“Wait, so that means--?”

“Yeah,” Meis confirms. “You’re not the only one. A lot of us are presenting again after the Promare left.” He polishes off the last of his slice while Lio stares at him. “Seems like the timing is different for everyone, though. I presented again just a few weeks after the Blaze, and you’re only going through it now.”

Lio wipes the grease off his fingers with a paper napkin. “I see,” he says, for lack of anything else to say, his mind buzzing once again. So his half-pieced together theory was true. Former Burnish were presenting again. Not an effect any of them were expecting after the Second Great World Blaze, to say the least.

“All this time, I thought Boss was an alpha…” Gueira, oddly quiet throughout the whole exchange, finally mumbles.

“Is it really that much of a surprise?” Lio asks, a bit surprised himself, before gesturing towards his general build. “I’m not exactly…”

Gueira shakes his head. “Nothing to do with it. Sometimes, I swear I could get a whiff of alpha off you, even though I objectively knew none of us smelled like anything,” he explains, reaching over to grab the last slice of margherita. “Or, I dunno, might have just been the way you carried yourself.”

“Omegas in leadership positions are hardly anything to be impressed by these days.” Maybe in the previous generation, it would have been something to talk about, but those gender roles had long since fallen by the wayside, even before the world had spontaneously combusting humans to think about.

Gueira shrugs. “Like I said, _objectively_ speaking.”

“Right.” Lio lets it drop. “So were they right? Do I really smell different?”

On either side of him, Gueira and Meis turn their noses closer towards him and take a sniff.

Gueira leans back. “Kind of? It’s barely there.”

“It’s still very light,” Meis agrees. “But definitely pre-presentation pheromones.”

Lio frowns a little, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. He closes his eyes and takes a deep lungful of air. Nothing. Just the smell of pizza and sunshine beating down on the concrete sidewalk. He opens his eyes to see the two looking at him curiously.

“I can’t smell anything,” he admits. “Not from me, nor from either of you.”

“Not yet,” Meis reassures him. “You will, soon enough. I mean, if you’re curious, I’ve been told I smell like--”

“Shh!” Gueira flaps a hand at him, grinning now. “Don’t spoil it! Let Boss go into it blind, this’ll be fun.”

 _“What,”_ Lio says, feeling his cheeks heat up again. “Gueira--”

“No, no, he’s right,” Meis nods along, smirking. “It’s no fun if we just _tell_ you. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own the next time we see each other.”

_“You two--”_

“ _And_ if you get it wrong, you’ll have to treat us to burgers.” Gueira holds a balled up fist over the table, and Meis knocks his own against it.

“I refuse these terms,” he says, petulantly.

“Well, too bad, because it’s happening,” Gueira says.

“And Lio Fotia is a man of his word, is he not?” Meis adds.

Lio slaps a hand to his face and lets out a defeated sigh against the background noise of his two ex-generals laughing at his expense.

Under his hand though, his smile is wide.

▲▼▲

A cloud of steam erupts from the pot as Lio removes the lid, and he jerks back just in time to save his face from getting scalded (and wasn’t _that_ a possibility he was still getting used to). He ladles a small amount of the soup into his tasting spoon and brings it to his lips…

…and almost cries. Because finally, fucking _finally,_ it tastes _perfect._

Well, more accurately, it tastes like how Galo makes it, which Galo insists is perfect. You would think that soup wouldn’t be any more complicated than just throwing ingredients in a pot with some water and hoping for the best, but miso soup has proven to be something else. It only took weeks of making it over and over again to finally get it right. Stupid Galo and his stupid obsession with all things Japanese. Stupid Lio and his stupid desire to make one (1) blue-haired idiot smile.

He turns the burner off and replaces the lid to keep the soup warm and puts his spoon down on the counter. His eyes trail up to the clock on the wall--Galo would be getting home anytime soon now.

A few minutes later, Lio hears the front door rattle open, just as he's plating up the food.

“I’m hoooooooome!” Galo hollers from the front door like he’s coming home to a mansion and not a two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and a living room. He saunters into the kitchen soon after, nose up in the air and sniffing exaggeratedly.

“What’s cookin’, gorgeous?” he asks, thankfully in his indoor voice this time, as he sidles up behind Lio, sliding a hand around his middle and dropping a kiss on the top of his head.

Lio elbows him lightly in the ribs to get him to back off a smidge, but does turn his head, rising a little on the balls of his feet to plant a light kiss against Galo’s jaw in return. “Chicken teriyaki, so you’ll finally shut up about it,” he answers.

“Oh, _hell_ yes,” Galo says, leaning his weight even more on Lio. He reaches a hand over to the tablet propped up worryingly close to the stove, where an online recipe for the dish is still opened up on the screen. He scrolls to the top of the page and groans a little at the picture of the dish, chicken skin glistening with glaze. “Life just hasn’t been the same since that Japanese place got crushed.” ( _By the Parnassus,_ he doesn’t say.) “I’m still trying to convince Ol’ Akira to open it back up.”

“Let the man retire, Galo,” Lio says, pinching the errant hand he spies trying to squirrel away a piece of chicken from the serving plate on the counter, getting a yelp in return.

“He just needs a successor,” Galo replies, shaking his hand out. “ _Shit,_ that hurt, Lio--”

“Serves you and your sticky fingers right, Galo Thymos--and what, were you planning to be that successor, by any chance?”

“Hmmmmmm,” Galo hums, long and loud like he’s actually mulling the idea over. “Naw,” he finally decides, “My burning firefighter soul burns for one thing and one thing only: putting out fires!”

Lio can’t help but snort. “Well, good to know you aren’t thinking of suddenly changing careers. Now go and take a shower while I get everything out to the table.”

Galo groans, pressing his cheek against the side of Lio’s head. “But _baaaaaaabe,_ ” he whines, his arm winding itself tighter around Lio’s waist, “I’m so _hungryyyy._ ”

At this angle, part of Galo's hair kind of flops over his face, blocking his view of what he was doing. Lio’s about to tell him to get off, when his nose suddenly picks up on something, and he takes pause.

Sweat and soot and smoke—the smell wafting off Galo’s skin.

“Babe?” Galo tentatively asks after a still moment, definitely noticing the way that Lio doesn’t immediately try to wrestle him off.

Lio elbows him in the ribs again, and this time, it’s evident that Galo isn’t expecting it, as he lets out a sharp _‘Oof!’_ as he stumbles back a little, loosening his hold around his middle. Lio swiftly turns on his heel to face him. “Shower now, Galo Thymos,” he commands, before he softens, touching his fingertips to Galo’s flank. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

Galo gives a small, reassuring smile, which is still undercut by the slight wince on his face. “Don’t worry, it didn’t hurt. You just surprised me,” he says before leaning down to brush Lio’s bangs back so he can kiss him on the forehead. This close again, Lio can smell it—sweat and soot and smoke—but before he can form any particular thought about that, Galo draws back from him entirely and breezes out of the kitchen. “I’ll be quick!” he calls out as he crosses the apartment to go to his bedroom. “Like five minutes tops!” He opens the door. “Don’t start without me!” And it clicks shut behind him.

Lio stands there in the kitchen, alone.

Sweat and soot and smoke.

It’s a familiar smell, one that Galo always carries with him whenever he comes off a shift and decides to shower at home rather than at the station. It’s a smell that Lio has wafted off of him dozens of times by this point. For all intents and purposes, it’s not even something that should be getting his attention anymore.

And yet.

He clicks his tongue. All the scent talk was getting to him, and it had just been a _day._

As promised, Galo emerges from his room five minutes later, dressed in a t-shirt and loose sweatpants, his hair damp and a bit droopier than usual, with a towel slung around his neck. He isn't wearing his compression sleeve, leaving the scars on his arm on display--something he had been reluctant to do when Lio had first moved in, fearing that it would make him uncomfortable.

( _“You seem like the kind of guy who would feel like he’d need to take responsibility for other Burnish’s mistakes, even if they were complete accidents and had nothing to do with you, Mr. Mad Burnish Boss,”_ Galo had explained, demonstrating a depth of insight that most people never gave him enough credit for).

But Lio had been adamant that it was something they couldn’t shy away from, if they were to live together. It had never been an issue since.

He walks over to the dining table, where Lio has laid the food out. “Whoa, you’ve really got a thing for the aesthetics, huh?” he comments, awed, as his eyes scan over the spread—meticulously plated chicken teriyaki, salad greens drizzled with a healthy amount of dressing, miso soup sprinkled with chopped leeks, and bowls of steaming white rice.

Lio feels himself blush a little at that, but inwardly preens. He might have spent most of his years on this earth eating expired slop out of tin cans due to necessity, but he liked to make his food pretty now that he could. So sue him.

He doesn’t say that, but just clears his throat and says, “Ready to eat then?”

He has half a mind to think that Galo might not have heard him, still fixated on the feast laid out before him, but then he looks up at Lio, maybe drooling a little, and wordlessly nods as he takes his seat.

As they eat (with Galo loudly moaning his appreciation every five seconds until Lio has to ask him to stop and think of the neighbors), Lio can’t help but notice something off. Something missing. He takes a deep inhale as subtly as he can while Galo is telling him the latest on him and Varys’ ongoing contest to see who could get away with subtly moving Remi’s tiny potted cactus to increasingly inconvenient spots around the pantry before the man finally noticed. (It was a serious matter; bets had been taken.)

Then it hits him--Galo doesn’t smell like sweat and soot and smoke anymore. Instead, he smells light and fresh. Seated across him, the smell isn’t that strong, but Lio can tell from past experience of being pressed up against a freshly bathed Galo--he smells like the body wash he uses, pleasant but generic and soapy.

He frowns a bit. This was going to be a thing for a while, wasn’t it? _Smelling things._ Or rather, the weird fixation on things and their smells.

“Lio?”

He looks up to see Galo, bowl of rice in one hand and chopsticks in the other, looking at him with concern. Shit, he had spaced out again.

“You okay, bud? Earlier in the kitchen too…”

Lio sighs, lowering the clump of rice that was halfway to his mouth. “Sorry,” he apologizes, “It’s about...smells.” It sounds dumb. But he doesn’t bother lying. Galo just nods, seemingly prompting him to continue. There’s no judgement, no teasing, but the look in his eyes has shifted into one of understanding.

Lio purses his lips. He doesn’t really want to get into it right at this very moment. “Later,” he says simply.

Galo nods again. “Okay,” he says, and that’s that. He knows when not to push, and Lio appreciates that about him. “So you didn’t hear a word I just said, did you?” he asks, back to teasing.

“Unlike a certain idiot, I can multitask,” Lio readily shoots back, feeling a frisson of relief that it was so easy to shift like this, as long as it was with Galo. “And just so you know, I bet my money on Varys.”

 _“...You didn’t.”_ Galo says, his voice thick with betrayal.

Lio just shrugs.

▲▼▲

It was a silent agreement they held that if one of them did the cooking, the other would do the cleaning. Which is why Lio is flipping through channels, still warm from his bath, while Galo putters around the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of running water and dishes clinking.

Lio eventually settles on a reality show and gets comfortable. There was something wonderfully mundane about a show where people’s biggest problem was whether their housemates liked them enough to keep them on the show or not. He used to think that these kinds of things would grate on his nerves, but there was something to be said about so-called ‘mindless television’ after living as a Burnish. It was almost...refreshing, in a way. So people could live like this, without worrying about the threat of the law or where their next meal was going to come from. It was fascinating and entertaining to see the kinds of problems people made for themselves when the government didn’t make them for you, and Lio found himself surprisingly invested.

“Man, you sure didn’t hold back on all the stuff you used for prep work,” Galo’s voice cuts through the ranting of the woman on screen _(Becca? Becky?)_ as he plops down on the couch next to Lio, then immediately rearranges himself so that he’s lying down, settling his head on Lio’s thigh and propping his feet up on the armrest on the other side. “Ever heard of one-pan cooking? I heard it’s all the rage these days.”

“ _Someone’s_ got to make you work for your keep, Galo Thymos,” Lio quips back, his eyes never leaving the screen, where a fistfight has started to break out. All the same, his hand trails down to start combing idly through blue hair, and his ears pick up on the contented little sounds Galo makes every time Lio’s fingers scratch lightly against his scalp.

They continue like this for a few minutes before Galo reaches over to the coffee table, blindly groping until his hand finds his tablet. He powers it up and goes back to reading what is probably that _‘Astrophysics for Pedestrians’_ book he was telling Lio about the other night.

(Lio doesn’t know much about Galo’s reading habits before they had met, but he’s willing to bet that the collection of e-books he now has on astrophysics and alien life were all purchased after they had stumbled upon Prometh’s old lab. It was Galo’s way of understanding the Promare in the aftermath of everything that had happened, one that went beyond what shitty alien sci-fi B-movies could provide.)

Galo gets to reading, and Lio is left to get fully immersed in the riveting drama of everyday folk as he plays with Galo’s hair.

The hour passes in a blur of laughter, tears, unfounded accusations and hormone-driven conflict _(Alphas fighting each other for dominance? Never seen that one before)_ and the episode draws to a close with promises of even more drama next week. Lio switches the TV off and looks down, to where Galo looks back at him expectantly, a question in his eyes.

“It's later,” Galo says.

“It's later,” Lio agrees.

Galo sits up, powering down his tablet and putting it back on the coffee table, then shifts so he’s facing Lio, one leg bent and resting on the couch, his foot slightly hanging off the edge of the seat. Lio angles his body to face his in turn.

“So…” Galo begins at length.

Lio raises an eyebrow at him. “So…?”

Galo huffs, smiling a bit sheepishly. “I don’t know where to start, to be honest.”

“You have questions,” Lio states, matter-of-fact. “Just ask them. I won’t get offended.” The corner of his lip quirks up as he can’t help but add, “I know you Promepolitans are woefully misinformed.”

Galo snorts because Lio is right, they’ve come to discover in the last few months together. Galo would say something seemingly inconsequential, then Lio would be quick to round on him and correct him. There had been some anger and defensiveness at the beginning, but the two of them quickly grew to realize that whatever ingrained biases and prejudices Galo (and, widely speaking, the general public of Promepolis) held were the product of the lies and fear-mongering Kray’s government had been feeding their citizens since the manifestation of the Burnish. There was a lot of unlearning and educating to be done, on both their parts.

Which is why it is fortunate for them that Galo isn’t afraid of being proven wrong. In the short time they’ve known each other, Lio has known him to be someone who holds onto his beliefs strongly, but is capable of changing his opinion when presented with new information. It was way more than could be said for other people.

“So you’re an omega?” Galo asks, undaunted and straight to the point.

“Yes,” Lio answers. A simple answer to a simple question.

“Why don’t you smell like one?”

There was still the matter of how Galo phrases his questions that the two of them still had to work on. The accusatory wording makes Lio’s hackles rise a little, but he tamps out the urge to say something rude in return. _It’s not an attack,_ he’s quick to remind himself. Coming from any other person, it might have been, but this was Galo who was asking—an honest man without a judgmental bone in his body, whose innate curiosity was often mistaken for outward idiocy. Tact was just not his strong suit, unfortunately.

“…I haven’t smelled like one since becoming a Burnish, I suppose,” he says after a moment.

“So it’s true that Burnish don’t smell like anything?”

“Yes, it’s true,” Lio confirms, and Galo nods, seeming to file this information away for future use, and this action is enough to quell Lio’s previous irritation and make him want to go into more detail. “It was an advantage for us on stealth and infiltration operations, and there are artificial scents available on the black market for those who want to blend in.”

Galo makes a slightly constipated look at the casual way he talks about illegal activities and contraband, so Lio appends, “Though most Burnish who choose to hide in the city just try to pass themselves off as very, very mild-scented Betas. The ones with mates were luckier, in that they had someone to scent them, if needed.”

Galo nods, still looking a bit uncomfortable (must be hard being a public servant dating an ex-terrorist sometimes), but sponges up the information all the same. “No scents, huh…” he says, trailing off with a faraway look in his eye, like he’s remembering something. “…No wonder I didn’t smell you coming up behind me in the cave back then. Then again, I was also distracted with trying to figure out what to do.”

Lio lets out an amused huff. “Say it as it is. You let down your guard, alpha.”

Galo’s gaze snaps back up to meet his. A certain look passes over his face for a split second, then Lio blinks and it’s gone. It throws him a little off guard.

“Was there anything else?” Galo asks.

“Huh?” Lio says, still a bit taken aback.

“Aside from losing your scents, did anything else change after becoming Burnish?”

Lio shakes off the last of the confusion, deciding it was nothing. “Yes, it wasn’t just our scents. We lost all secondary sex features too,” he says.

Galo’s eyes widen at that and he sits up a little straighter. “So…heat and rut…?”

Lio’s lips quirk up into a bitter little smile. “It was convenient not to have those, as people who were always on the run.”

Galo barely suppresses a wince at that, and Lio feels a pang of guilt. Okay, maybe that was a little mean. Chastened, he stretches his hand out and lays it on top of Galo’s own, where it sits loosely balled up on top of his thigh. He stretches his fingers out a little, lets his fingertips brush against the edge of the lowest of the burn scars, right above his wrist. Galo always seemed to forget that he’d been hurt by Burnish too.

“We didn’t go through heat and rut, but there were other things,” Lio continues, as Galo’s hand turns over to lightly grasp his, squeezing his fingers. “We lost almost all ability to detect other people’s scents, for one.”

Galo gives him a curious look. “’Almost’ all ability?” he repeats.

Oh, fuck. Lio grimaces at that. He hadn’t meant to bring that up.

Galo senses his distress immediately, and gives his fingers another gentle squeeze. “Hey, Lio, it’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it—“

“No, no,” Lio cuts through. He feels the headache coming on already. “It’s…It’s not a nice memory, is all. How we found out.” Calm, stay calm. Galo’s touch is warm and comforting, but it does nothing to quell the blood starting to boil in his veins.

“Lio—“ Galo tries again.

“It was Freeze Force,” he blurts out.

Galo shuts his mouth immediately.

Before Lio can stop himself, he starts to spill everything, suddenly overwhelmed by the need to tell Galo and have him _understand_. “Imagine coming back from a supply run,” he bites out with some difficulty, but unable to contain himself all the same. “To find your safehouse _reeking_ of alpha. Every single inch, just covered in it.”

Across him, he hears Galo suck in a breath, but Lio presses on, the words tumbling out, pushing each other out of his mouth, one after the other:

“They must have brought in an entire unit, told them to stink the whole place up, for it to smell that strongly-- _for us to be able to smell them at all._ That’s how we found out—it’s not that we couldn’t smell anything anymore, it’s that our sense of smell had just diminished significantly. If it smelled strongly enough, we’d be able to detect it. I don’t know if they knew, or if it’s just something they thought to try for shits and giggles, but it sent a clear message: _We know where you are, nowhere is safe.”_

He lets out a rough sigh, his chest tight with residual fear and rage. “Many of us couldn’t sleep for weeks after that, always on edge, always trying to smell them out, even if we knew that our sense of smell was much weaker. Every scent carried on the wind sent us into a panic-- _was it alpha? Was it Freeze Force? Are we under attack? What did alpha even smell like again?_ Most of us hadn’t smelled any kind of pheromones for so long that we couldn’t even remember anymore. And they kept pulling that shit after that, so many times that we eventually lost count.

“Psychological warfare,” he spits out the phrase with an empty, bitter bark of laughter, “and they called _us_ terrorists?”

Lio’s eyes stare hard at their linked hands as his jaw clenches shut. Between them, their knuckles are stark white with how tightly they’re holding onto each other. Blood is pounding in his ears and his heart is hammering in his chest.

A long minute stretches between them. Lio distinctly hears someone breathing heavily—it takes him a moment to realize that it’s _him._

“That’s…” Galo quietly says after a while, “That’s _awful_.” There’s something in his voice that makes Lio look at him, and what he sees is a frustrated expression, Galo’s frown so deep that, if he were maybe just a shade angrier, Lio could imagine him with his teeth gritted into a snarl. His eyes don’t meet Lio’s when he speaks. “Alphas shouldn't...they shouldn’t…” he starts then scowls, trailing off and looking away, trying to figure out how to convey his thoughts.

 _Alphas shouldn’t do that,_ he seemed to want to say, or so Lio thinks. _Alphas shouldn’t terrorize people. Alphas shouldn’t use their sharpened senses and increased bulk for anything other than protecting others and bringing peace of mind_ —Lio can’t say for certain, but he thinks that maybe those are the things that are going through Galo’s head at that moment. They’re certainly the kinds of things that an alpha like Galo Thymos would think and hold true, like a creed, or a code of morals, rules never to be broken.

Whatever it is that Galo wants to say ultimately goes unfinished. It lapses into silence, and Lio can’t find it in himself to say anything in return, his temples still throbbing in old rage.

They don’t move for a long while, the silence heavy between them. Little by little, Galo’s hold on his hand loosens, and Lio can feel his own doing the same, in time with the settling of his anger, the slowing of his heartbeat, the retreat of the blood pounding in his ears. He lets his eyes slip closed, taking slow breaths.

Eventually, he opens his eyes again, feeling calmer, and peers up at Galo, who appears much steadier himself, a complex expression, concerned and apologetic, on his face.

“’m sorry,” Galo says, his voice still a little raw, as he starts running his thumb back and forth across Lio’s knuckles. “I’m so, so sorry you and the Burnish ever had to experience all that. Freeze Force had no right—they had _no fucking right—_ “ His brow furrows again as he emphasizes it. “—What they did was _disgusting_. I can’t even imagine how terrifying it must have been. And I’m so sorry you and the other Burnish had to experience that.”

He truly did seem sorry, and very upset, like he was going to get up and tear every single member of Freeze Force limb from limb if Lio just said the word. A small, primal part of Lio’s brain found that sweet. The bigger, more rational part of his brain was just exhausted.

“Mm,” Lio nods and makes a sound of acknowledgement, not really knowing what to say. Galo doesn’t seem to mind the lack of a reply either way. The touch of their hands is comforting—warm and grounding—and the thumb running across his knuckles is soothing. Suddenly, Lio finds himself craving more of it. Right now. Immediately.

He puts a hand on the couch to steady himself and scooches closer to Galo, who seems to understand inherently what Lio needs in that moment, and he stretches his leg on the couch out to let Lio settle in between his legs. He opens up his arms in invitation, giving a tired little smile, and Lio gratefully lets himself be gathered up into Galo’s arms and embraced, wrapping his own arms around Galo’s chest.

They stay like that for a while, and like this, Lio is in the perfect spot to press his ear against Galo’s chest and listen to the beating of Galo’s heart—slow and steady. It’s nice, a sound he never gets tired of hearing, whether it be in the middle of the day inside the fire station, or in the wee hours of the morning when they’re in bed, or just like this, at 11PM on the couch of their shared apartment after inadvertently opening up some of Lio’s old wounds.

The experience is always going to be messy, he thinks, but Galo has proven to be stronger than he seems. He’s never shied away from it, even when Lio hates it, still defaulting to the mindset that it was him, the leader of Mad Burnish, against the world—show any small weakness and that would be it for the Burnish, something he could never let happen. But this was Galo, an honest man without a judgmental bone in his body. Tactless, sure, but with the biggest damn heart any person could have, someone who had helped save Lio and his people once and every single day since then. _Through spark and flame,_ he’d said, and heeded it.

Galo shifts and Lio barely registers what is happening until they’re lying on the couch, with Galo laying supine, with Lio sprawled on top of him.

“This okay?” Galo asks in a husky, quiet voice no one would ever believe if Lio told them he possessed. His hold around Lio relaxes a little, and he slides his hands down, threads his fingers together at the small of Lio’s back.

Lio tilts his head up a little, lavender eyes meeting cobalt blue. “Yeah,” he says in return. He draws his arms to cross them atop of Galo’s chest. He rests his cheek on them, looking at that spot of dirt on the wall they could never seem to get out, no matter how powerful the cleaning products they subjected it to were.

“Do you want to keep talking about it?” Galo checks in with him. Lio can feel Galo’s pinkies brushing against the strip of skin at his back where his shirt has ridden up slightly.

“Mm…sure,” Lio decides. “But there’s not much else aside from that, actually,” he admits, his voice slightly muffled as he speaks against his wrist. “No heats, no ruts, no smelling for the most part…Can’t really say if alphas lost their heightened senses…We didn’t really have that many alphas to begin with, as far as I know. Secondary sex was something we never really discussed extensively anyway. There was always so much to be done. It seemed irrelevant.”

Galo’s hold around his waist tightens just the slightest bit. “You said that this morning too.”

He lifts his head to give Galo a pointed look. “Well, it is. Irrelevant.”

“Was,” Galo corrects. “Seems pretty relevant now, since we’re talking about it.”

Lio raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one who brought it up,” he reminds him.

“You smell different,” Galo says, the thing that started it all. “Remi says they’re pre-presentation pheromones.”

Lio stops himself before he can automatically retort. A beat passes. “So they are,” he says.

Galo’s eyes widen. “For real?” he breathes.

“I met up with Gueira and Meis earlier,” Lio says, leaning his chin back on his crossed arms. “I heard it from them—former Burnish are presenting again.”

“All of you?”

“Yes, but it seems like it’s different for everyone. Some Burnish presented again soon after the Blaze, others are only presenting now. Like me.”

Galo doesn’t immediately answer, and when Lio glances back up at his face, the look in Galo’s eyes can only be described as _wonder_.

“Better close your mouth before a fly gets in,” Lio comments.

Galo’s jaw snaps shut and he blinks a few times, but the wonder in his eyes, bright and awed, still lingers as he continues to look at Lio, his gaze focused, no longer as far away. “Sorry, it’s just…”

“Just…?” A traitorous tendril of nervousness curls through Lio’s gut. It was stupid, right after the conversation they’d just had, but Lio can’t help but worry—what had Kray’s government told their citizens about Burnish and their secondary sexes?

Then, a smile, pure and bright and uncomplicated, spreads out across Galo’s face. “I can’t wait to know your scent,” he says.

Lio feels something flutter deep in his chest at that, his fears immediately dissipating. Galo’s hold around his middle is solid, steady and present. His skin emanates comforting warmth, even through the thin layer of clothes that separates them. His heart is beating, slow-slow-steady, and Lio can feel the rhythm underneath his fingertips.

It is in this moment that he feels a surge of something strong—affection, definitely; maybe even love. Lio’s never said it, his feelings still too muddled by his past to be labeled, but there’s definitely an inkling of something similar in there. Galo’s never said it either, but Lio can recognize it in his eyes, in his words, in his actions. He’d be heartbroken if Lio ever told him what he didn’t want to hear, but Lio thinks and feels, more and more with each passing day, that Galo has nothing to worry about.

It is in this moment that a singular thought breaks through the maelstrom from the corner of his mind, small but loud and clear:

_I wish I could smell you._

An errant thought, surely, but he recognizes it for what it is. A deceptively simple statement masking a thousand other little ones— _I wish I could smell you. I wish I knew your scent. What do you smell like, underneath sweat and soot and smoke? What do you smell like, under your body wash, pleasant but generic and soapy? What do you smell like, under laundry detergent and lavender-scented fabric softener?_

_What do you smell like, Galo Thymos?_

_I wish I could smell you._

_I wish I could know you._

Lio doesn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he reaches a hand up to card a gentle hand through blue hair, floppy and soft. Galo gives a contented little smile at the action, leaning into the touch, watching Lio watching him.

“Soon, Galo Thymos,” Lio reassures him, and maybe he’s imagining things, but he thinks that his heart may be beating in time with Galo’s. “Soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> (1) Pizza Guy's name is Eli because I am absolutely charmed by [shirecorn](https://shirecorn.tumblr.com/)'s [Pizza](https://shirecorn.tumblr.com/post/190866462827/saw-promare-fell-for-some-nameless-gremlin-with) [Guy](https://shirecorn.tumblr.com/post/190884658927/i-had-a-dream-about-eli-so-thats-his-name-now) [doodles](https://shirecorn.tumblr.com/post/190902031457/i-timed-it-and-eli-only-had-10-more-seconds-of) on Tumblr and the name she gave him is Eli! Shire isn't affiliated with this fic, I just used the name she gave (with her permission). ^^
> 
> (2) Suzue is an OC of mine, who I hope can make an in-person appearance in the fic later on! (Don't worry, main focus will still be on our beloved mains lol)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading until the end of this chapter! I really hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I had fun writing it. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a comment! I love hearing what people liked. ^^
> 
> Thank you, and I hope you see you next chapter!
> 
> [I'm on twitter!](https://twitter.com/ax100writes) I occasionally share excerpts from my WIPs and little scenes I write as a breather between my fics!


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